Having just taken a 36-hour layover in Amsterdam on the way back from Lagos, I'm wondering why North America doesn't have any "canal cities" where waterways are an integral part of the street grid. There are certainly places where this could have happened - lower Manhattan, for instance, is prime canal territory, and the founders of the city were Dutch, so the idea wouldn't have been foreign to them. Does anyone have an idea why there aren't any American equivalents of Amsterdam, Venice or Bruges, and can anyone suggest a POD which would lead to such cities existing? Bonus points if there are gondoliers.